Lanny’s kayak headed up the channel toward the back bay.
So he wasn’t heading out to open sea. I expelled a breath. I’d kayaked before, on lakes and tame rivers, and I figured I could handle a protected bay.
I went down the stairs.
Straps hung free on the kayak rack. I chose the sleek white Necky, thinking the captain has real nice equipment. I lifted it off the rack and set it on the end of the dock, front end hanging over the black water. Now for a paddle. I glanced around. The tall fiberglass gear locker had one door ajar. I opened it and chose my paddle, keeping watch for a pissed green-haired owner. I took a twenty from my wallet and left it in the locker.
Easy as breathing, I was in the Necky paddling up the channel toward the back bay.
I was dressed for a coffee run, not kayaking, in jeans and sneakers and a T-shirt, and I quickly worked up some body heat in the summery night. There was no sound but the suck of my paddle in the glassy water — putting in, pulling free. No light but the glow from the moon. As I glided past the waterfront, on my left, I saw people inside bars and restaurants and if they put their faces to their windows they might glimpse a sleek shape finning among the anchored sailboats. To my right was the sandspit that began back at the mouth of the harbor and rose to giant dunes in the distance, well ahead of me, where the channel widened into the bay.
Right here, within the confines of the narrow channel, I could see anything that was moving on the water, anything beached on the sandspit.
Nobody. Nothing. Just me skimming along like a water bug.
And then suddenly my paddle caught on something, dragged something silvery out of the water. I stared at the thing dangling from the right-hand blade and identified it as a jellyfish. Shit. I’d probably killed it. Carefully I dipped the blade back into the water and set the jelly free. I was leaning over for a closer look, to see if it would swim away, when I realized the water was full of jellyfish. Translucent saucer-shaped jellies and small blue petal-shaped jellies and crazy-looking see-through jellies full of what looked like fried eggs. They were everywhere. I let the kayak drift, balancing the paddle across the cockpit, floating through the swarm. The bloom—I recalled the word, I’d read about this sort of thing, this was a jellyfish bloom. It was a seawater garden and in the silver moonlight it stunned me with its beauty.
Stunned like I’d been stung.
I thought of the huge purple-striped jelly I’d seen in the open ocean, of the red welt on the diver’s face.
Did these jellies, here in the channel, carry a sting in their trailing tentacles?
A line from the Ancient Mariner popped into my brain. Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs, upon the slimy sea. Thank you very much, Walter, for sharing.
This jellyfish bloom was slowing me down.
I was losing Lanny, somewhere up ahead.
If I’d been wrong and all he carried in his pack was a snack and binoculars for star-gazing, then I’d leave him to it. If I was right, though, he carried something that I wanted. Something that had clearly frightened him, and yet it was something worth stealing, worth hiding, worth covering up. Was he frightened of the diver, as well? Frightened, understandably, of what happened to the diver in the ocean, and then later in the Keasling cave. Terrified, I would think, of whoever fed the diver bad anchovies.
Unless, I had to consider, it was Lanny himself who had poisoned the diver. I didn’t really think so. If I thought that, I’d turn my kayak and hightail it back to Jake’s dock.
I started to paddle, cutting my blades into the spaces between the jellyfish. Perhaps it was my imagination but they seemed to get with the program, to give me some room.
And finally, I paddled the Necky out of the bloom.
By the time I reached the end of the narrow channel, the water was innocent of jellyfish. I left behind the bloom and the docks and the buildings and entered the gentle wilds of the widening bay.
Way in the distance I thought I saw something riding the water. Something just at the limits of my vision.
Lanny, I figured, in his kayak.
I struck out in that direction.
The bay widened — the far left shore growing bristly with eel grass and the far right shore rounded with rising sand dunes. I paddled harder, suddenly eager to reach Lanny and sweet-talk him or bully him into telling me what the hell was going on.
There came a snort behind me and water splashed my back and I let out a cry that echoed across the water. My heart slammed. Jumbo squid out hunting? Did they hunt here in the bay? And if not squid, what? I pivoted in my seat to look the monster in the eye. It was a black shiny eye in a long torpedo body but it was not a squid. Just a sea lion.
I expelled a breath. Go play somewhere else.
I'd had my fill of sea creatures. Like I was late for dinner I plunged the paddle in the water and took off — no style, no rhythm, just me galumphing across the bay.
The sea lion watched me go.
Lanny in the distance watched me come. The bow of his kayak was turned to face me. He was still as the water, his paddle horizontal across his knees.
He must have heard me cry out. Now, he watched me coming.
I waved.
The kayaker dipped his paddle and turned, moving deeper into the bay, and within a few minutes disappeared around a jutting spit of land.
I found my rhythm and settled into it. I heard a splash, sounding a good distance behind me. I glanced back, saw nothing, smiled. Not going to get spooked, this time. Something unknown in the water and your mind takes off — but there’s always an explanation.
I refocused on the invisible kayaker ahead.
Wherever he was going, it was getting lonely out here. To my right the sand dunes grew and to my left, across the widening bay, the only structure along the shoreline was a long building with a lot of glass that shined in the moonlight. And then the leftward shoreline receded into darkness.
I kept to the dunes side of the bay, following that bone-white shoreline.
Within another five minutes I too rounded the jutting spit of land.
And then I saw the figure on the dunes.
Rising like elephant backs, the dunes up ahead on the right shoreline were white in the moonlight. The figure stood atop the largest of the elephants, a stick-figure silhouette at this distance, but the silhouette wore a pack. On the shore at the foot of the dune, at waterline, was a shape that strongly resembled a beached kayak.
All right, then.
I angled my kayak toward the dunes.
Lanny fled over the top of the elephant.
As I neared the shore I saw that the beached kayak was a Necky single, like mine, only green. It was stenciled with Captain Kayak’s logo. My craft arrowed onto the wide muddy beach, a couple yards from its green twin. I understood the need for a kayak here. Only a craft with a shallow draft could reach this beach. I assumed Lanny had come by kayak for just that reason. That, and stealthy quiet.
I secured my paddle, took off my shoes and socks, rolled up the legs of my jeans, swung my legs free, and stepped into the muck to drag my kayak up high on the beach. The last thing I wanted was for it to drift free.
Now what?
Well lady, you either sit here and wait for Lanny to return, or you climb up that elephant and see what’s on the other side.
I climbed, and the sand was soft and cool and slippery under my feet. As the dune steepened I felt the climbing-burn in my thighs. I was glad to reach the summit.
Over the summit was a shallow descent onto gentle dune waves. In my night-limited vision I could make out the shine of the sea, in the distance, and the spikes of bushy dune vegetation, closer by. Nothing moving. Just me.